A textual analysis of the effect of short-term volunteering on attitudes toward refugees in Malaysia

Abstract

Does exposure to an unfamiliar migrant community change implicit biases? We conducted an experimental study by exposing Malaysians them to a few hours of volunteering with Rohingya refugees, and we examined the effect of this treatment on their attitudes through a textual analysis. We measured changes in attitude through pure valence and multiple measures of implicit bias, including linguistic intergroup bias. We found that the volunteers became markedly more positive, and this change was statistically significant. Our results suggest that brief exposure to refugees may be a cost-effective policy lever for changing local perceptions of refugees.